In 2000, Al Gore lost Georgia by 11.8 points and Kerry lost by 16.6 points. Obama has reduced that to 5.2 points, which is a swing of 11.4 percent from 2004. This swing is greater than the national swing of 9.2%.

During the last 8 years, the composition of the voters has changed a lot. The table below shows the percentage of voters who belonged to a specific race or ethnic group.

Race

2000

2004

2008

White

81%

70%

65%

African American

19%

25%

30%

Hispanic

–

4%

3%

That’s quite a change in voter demographics, Compare that to the census estimate of population (in 2006) of 58.9% non-Hispanic whites, 29.9% African Americans and 7.5% Hispanics. This shows that African Americans, probably for the first time in Georgia history, voted in proportion of their population. The credit for that goes to the Obama campaign’s voter registration and Get-Out-the-Vote (GOTV) efforts.

Turnout this year was a little lower than 2004, mostly because of the high turnout among whites in 2004.

2000

2004

2008

Total

69%

77%

76%

White

71%

80%

78%

African American

63%

72%

75%

Since I am estimating White and African American turnout in 2008 from the exit polls, it might be prone to some error. We’ll know more when all the detailed data is released by the Georgia Secretary of State.

If African American turnout could be higher, Obama might have gotten closer by at most 1 point. However, do remember that in absolute numbers 41% more African Americans voted this year compared to 2004. The increase in the number of white voters was less than 9%.

The next table shows why Obama lost. It tells us what portion of whites and blacks voted for the Democratic Presidential candidate in the last three elections.

Race

2000

2004

2008

White

35%

23%

23%

African American

86%

88%

98%

Obama needed around 27% or more of the white vote. However, he got the same proportion as Kerry.

Looking at voter groups, 37% of all voters (i.e. 57% of white voters) were white evangelicals. Obama got only 10% among them. Since he got 23% among all whites, so Obama got 40% of the white non-evangelical vote. Compare to Kerry who got 16% of white evangelical vote and 30% of white non-evangelical vote. Also, compare nationally where Obama got 43% of the white vote and 24% of white evangelical voters, i.e. Obama got a majority (53%) of non-evangelical white vote nationally.

Young voters nationally flocked to Obama in this election, a lot more than in recent elections. This can be seen in the graphs here.

18-29

30-44

US

GA

US

GA

All

66%

48%

52%

56%

White

54%

20%

41%

32%

The low number (20%) for 18-29 year old white voters in Georgia surprised me a lot. It shows how difficult it might be for Democrats to win Georgia even in the future.

Nationally, Obama did somewhat better with white voters than Kerry in 2004. However, there were regional variations. In Appalachia and parts of the South, Obama got a smaller percentage of the white vote than Kerry did.

Southern counties that voted more heavily Republican this year than in 2004 tended to be poorer, less educated and whiter, a statistical analysis by The New York Times shows. Mr. Obama won in only 44 counties in the Appalachian belt, a stretch of 410 counties that runs from New York to Mississippi. Many of those counties, rural and isolated, have been less exposed to the diversity, educational achievement and economic progress experienced by more prosperous areas.

The increased turnout in the South’s so-called Black Belt, or old plantation-country counties, was visible in the results, but it generally could not make up for the solid white support for Mr. McCain. Alabama, for example, experienced a heavy black turnout and voted slightly more Democratic than in 2004, but the state over all gave 60 percent of its vote to Mr. McCain. (Arkansas, however, doubled the margin of victory it gave to the Republican over 2004.)

Less than a third of Southern whites voted for Mr. Obama, compared with 43 percent of whites nationally.

Do look at this table and a map of the US showing county-level electoral shifts.

In 13 [states], Obama received less than 35% of the white vote. His three lowest performing states: Alabama (10%), Mississippi (11%), and Louisiana (14%). The other 10: GA (23%), SC (26%), TX (26%), OK (29%), AR (30%), UT (31%), AK (32%), WY (32%), ID (33%), and TN (34%). On the other hand, Obama won the white vote in 18 states and DC: CA, CO, CT, DE, DC, HI, IL, IA, ME, MA, MI, MN. NH. NY. OR, RI, WA, WI and VT. Obama’s lowest percentage of the white vote he received in a state that he won: NC (35%). The highest percentage of the white vote Obama received in a state he lost: MT (45%).

Razib has a few maps showing Obama’s performance among white voters in all the states compared to Kerry’s performance in 2004 as well as to the national average for white voters this year.

Pollster shows that in states with higher than about 20-25% of African American population, Obama performed poorly among white voters.

All things considered, Barack Obama did very well in Georgia. I was always skeptical about the Democrats winning Georgia, except in a national landslide. How well did the Obama campaign bigwigs think they could do in Georgia can be gauged from this anecdote from August 27.

[Obama’s election manager David Plouffe] said that the campaign’s target in Georgia is about 47% of the vote, owing to Ex-Rep. Bob Barr’s ability to siphon votes away from John McCain.

In the end, Bob Barr didn’t do well at all, but Obama got his 47% of the vote. It looks to me like the Obama campaign knew what it was doing. Do you remember the Obama spreadsheet that leaked just after Super Tuesday and was remarkably accurate about the primary results?

There’s a lot more I want to analyze, including county and precinct level data, precincts in which our team worked. So tune in for more analysis and rambling soon.

It’s a fun science fiction story about small, warring nation-states with poor gravity, artificial suns and naval battles. Some of the plot is predictable, but it’s a quick read, the kind of book I liked to read when I was young.

3:21pm: Turnout here in South Atlanta is okay today but add in the early vote numbers and it’s pretty high.

5:01pm: The last shift just went out. Polls close in 2 hours.

Looking at the midday numbers, 25-30% more people had already voted in our precincts than did four years ago.

5:49pm: I am making last minute Get-Out-the-Vote phone calls.

6:28pm: Not sure what to think of the data coming in from the precincts. Did we do good but not as well as needed in this area?

7:00pm: Polls close in Georgia. We are packing up and going home.

8:00pm: Home.

8:13pm: With Pennsylvania being called for Obama, the chances of McCain winning have dropped below 1%.

8:16pm: Godless Hagan defeats Liddy Dole. God has spoken!

8:38pm:NBC has called Georgia for McCain. Looking at the exit polls, African Americans made up 30% of the voters which is equal to their proportion among registered voters and 5% more than their proportion in 2004. However, Obama got only 25% of the white vote.

The Senate race between Chambliss and Martin is closer due to the Libertarian candidate Buckley and might head to a December run-off.

9:25pm: With Ohio projected as an Obama win by NBC and Fox News, I now project Barack Obama as the next President of the United States. Go Obama!

9:47pm: I didn’t blog it but told my fellow volunteers on the Obama campaign that Obama will net around 350 electoral votes and he looks on track for that.

9:59pm: I have been watching CNN since coming home. Now I am switching to Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert special.

11:00pm: Polls close on the West Coast and it’s official. President-elect Barack Obama!

11:32pm: A very nice concession speech by McCain, despite some booing from the crowd.

Nov 5 11:50am: I went to sleep after Obama’s victory speech feeling dazed. I had full confidence from the start that Obama would win but the actual win did affect me a lot. I was a little bummed out last night about Georgia but feel better about it today. More thoughts on Georgia and the neighborhoods our team worked in during this campaign after we have official precinct results.

12:09pm: What’s wrong with Alaska? Did they just re-elect a convicted felon to the Senate?

Like this:

Georgia has been reliably Republican for a while now. But this election is different. There’s a 1 in 3 (or more) chance that Obama might win tomorrow.

I have been really busy recently and haven’t had time to blog. Volunteering for the Obama campaign has been fun but also kept me busy. We had phonebanking events every day last week with one at our home on Friday. Then on Saturday and Sunday, we went door to door contacting voters in South Atlanta to go out and vote on Tuesday. That’s also what we are doing today.

So how did Georgia become competitive? In 2000, Bush won Georgia 55%-43% and in 2004 increased the margin to 58%-41%. But in 2008, you can see for yourself:

Georgia is now a battleground state. McCain is leading Obama by only 1.7% here according to Pollster which “averages” all polls. Also, the betting market Intrade has Obama winning Georgia at 27.5%.

In early voting since September 22, we have had 2,020,839 voters already cast their votes, which is 61.5% of the total number of votes cast (3,285,140) in 2004. Assuming a turnout of 80% (higher than 77% in 2004), this would mean that 43.9% have already voted. Among these early voters, African Americans comprised 34.9% of the total. We are hoping that African American turnout remains high even on Election Day tomorrow and puts Barack Obama over the top in Georgia.